Coming to a school near you

One month ago today was the Sandy Hook tragedy. While I still cannot wrap my head around the senseless killings that took the lives of 27 innocent victims, what I find equally inconceivable is the callous response from the National Rifle Association in the days that followed.

While I’m paraphrasing the NRA’s response, they indicated schools are easy targets so Americans should focus on arming them to prevent future tragedies like Sandy Hook. This line of thought smacks of a deep-seated paranoia that I can’t comprehend. As I understand it, the NRA’s argument is do not limit the manufacturing of weapons – rather arm yourself and everyone. The thought of people being able to purchase a semi automatic assault rifle would have been inconceivable when I was the age of the elementary school children killed, but now the NRA (and apparently America) find this an inalienable right. Following that line of thought, one expects that only providing more deadly weaponry is the answer so perhaps in another decade we’ll be discussing the need to bring grenade launchers (shown above) or having armored tanks at our schools.

I suppose why I’m writing this post is because I want to ask, is this the kind of society we want to live and is this what we truly value?